When you launched your business’s website, you probably thought that was it. However, if you’re not continually paying attention to the little details that make your site user-friendly, you’ll miss out on visitors, sales, and growth opportunities. Today, One Brick Tech offers tips to help hotel owners do more than set it and forget it.

What to Watch For

You could keep an eye on hundreds of different metrics, but a few of the top include your conversion rate, number of unique visitors, visitor location, and website speed.

Your conversion rate is simply a percentage of site visitors that perform your desired action. Nielsen Norman Group uses the example of e-commerce to determine how many site conversions equaled a sale. Pay attention to your conversion ratios, which might also include signing up for an upgrade to a higher level of service or spending more time on a particular article or video.

The number of unique visitors to your website tells you how many individual IP addresses are browsing your online real estate. This is important, especially as you use business process management (BPM), to understand better how to align your website with customers. automate and optimize processes and workflows by analyzing how people and data interact. This can include redesigning processes for optimal customer experiences, including designing a website that creates a user-friendly experience. When you look more into BPM, you may consider this option to constantly monitor effectiveness and then take steps to improve the process and output.

In addition to knowing how many unique visitors you’ve had, it’s also helpful to know where they’re coming from. Visitor location data can help you see the location of everyone that finds your sites, either through a Google search or by directly entering it into their browser. Wire Delta explains that knowing your visitors’ location can help you tailor content to those that use your site the most.

Finally, you must also know how quickly your website operates. This is especially important in an e-commerce environment, where an expedient process is crucial to maintaining customer interest. If your website loads too slowly, it looks unprofessional and untrustworthy. A great way to see how quickly your site loads for your customers is to clear your cache — website caching makes it load faster on your computer — and log directly into your website from a clean browser. If it takes more than just a second to load, it’s time to call your web developer to fix any technical errors or bugs that might be slowing you down.

Benefits of Keeping Active

It makes sense to keep a watchful eye on your website for many reasons. Knowing how your website looks to your customers will boost your conversion rate. And ensuring that your site is operating smoothly helps you instill confidence in your customers. Additionally, keeping track of metrics can help you identify problems that might negatively affect your SEO ranking. Your site will be more credible, and you will know precisely how to engage the customers supporting your business.

Knowing how to code is an invaluable asset in the modern world, and it can be a particularly useful skill if you’re managing your website. Having coding knowledge allows you to make updates quickly, open up new capabilities for your sites, such as adding an online store or a discussion forum, and ensure it’s always secure from potential malicious attacks. As a website owner, you have more control over your site – you don’t need to rely on others for small tweaks, modify logos or headings on each page with just a few lines of code, or even accomplish significant overhauls. To build your coding skills, visit Code Profs to learn more.

Remembering to Focus on Security As Well

Last but not least, you need to ensure that your website is a safe, secure place for your customers to visit. In addition to ensuring information such as passwords are encrypted and secure (this goes for employee passwords), consider adding two-factor authentication to your site. This will help further protect your customers’ information and data from malicious parties. If necessary, work with an IT professional to look for any weaknesses or vulnerabilities on your website. That way, you can correct them before problems arise.

When each business day has come to a close, you want to ensure that your guests are happy and that their private information is secure in your brick-and-mortar and online environments. Just as you would not leave without ensuring everything was in top shape, you must spend time watching your website using tools like BPM to ensure it accurately represents your business for your online customers.